A former Naval Reactors employee from Maryland will spend at least 12-and-a-half years in federal prison after his amateur spycraft got him pinched last year by an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign buyer of U.S. nuclear-propulsion secrets, the Justice Department said.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to communicate restricted data, according to a press release from the department. That one count alone carried a maximum penalty of life in prison, plus fines, Justice said.
Toebbe, who had worked for the federal government since 2012, was arrested in October after two years of scheming that started in earnest after an unidentified foreign government tipped off the FBI about Toebbe’s offer to sell it Virginia-class submarine reactor designs.
Toebbe’s wife, Diana Toebbe, allegedly participated in the scheme, though Justice’s press release from Monday did not mention her. According to the latest filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, Diana Toebbe has been in federal custody since she and her husband were arrested last year. Both Toebbes lived in Annapolis, Md., at the time of the events detailed in the government’s complaint.
After the unidentified foreign government looped in the FBI, federal agents posing as representatives of that government kept contact with Jonathan Toebbe, who detailed plans to sell them Virginia-class secrets in exchange for a cryptocurrency known as Monero.
The FBI, to keep Toebbe’s trust, provided him with tens of thousands of dollars worth of Monero in exchange for encrypted Virginia-class secrets delivered via dead drops. Toebbe delivered the data on solid state drives that he once hid in a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and once hid in a packet of chewing gum, according to Justice.
“There’s a message here for anyone who would sell out America’s secrets,” said Alan Kohler, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, said in Justice’s press release. “The FBI and its partners will use all our investigative techniques to bring you to justice.”
